This is a guest post from education writer Karen Schweitzer, the About.com Guide to Business School. She also writes about online degree programs. She haswrittenfrequently here in the past, and we are glad to have her back!

Conducting academic research online is easier than ever before. There are many different search engines, virtual reference shelves, and directories that have been created to help students and researchers find published studies, databases, journals, government documents, and other reliable sources of information. Some of the most useful include:

Designed for students and researchers at the university level, Infomine is a good place to find databases, electronic journals, electronic books, and other scholarly resources. The site is library built and maintained by librarians from several colleges and universities around the nation.

This Google search engine makes it easy to locate theses, books, articles, journals, and abstracts online. Results are ranked according to the full text of the document, recent citations, and the quality of the writer and publication.

Created by a consortium of seven universities, Intute is a free online service that catalogs the best web resources for students and researchers. Site visitors can also develop and improve their research skills with Intute’s 60 free tutorials.

Created by a reference librarian at the University of Denver, this free virtual reference desk was created specifically to help academic researchers. The site offers thousands of suggestions for finding academic web pages, government documents, and government agencies.

The Encyclopedia Smithsonian database contains more than 2 million records with text, audio, video, and images. The searchable encyclopedia covers a wide range of topics, including art, design, history, culture, science, and technology.

Scholarpedia looks and works a lot like Wikipedia, but the quality of the content is less questionable. Each article is written by an expert, peer reviewed, and monitored by a curator. Content is never outdated and can be cited like a print journal.